Russian special forces are engaged in a relentless offensive to pin down known Islamist terrorists on their home ground or hideouts in Dagestan, Chechnya, Kirgizstan and Kabardino Balkaria, casting a wide safety net around the Winter Olympic Games which opened in Sochi Friday, Feb. 7. DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report this safety net has been spread across three European countries.

In the last few days, seven armed jihadis were killed in Russian operations; another three civilians died in terrorist action; and many arrests were carried out, targeting suspected female suicide killers in the Caucasian, as well as in France, Austria and Germany.

Saturday, Feb. 8, Russian special forces stormed a third-floor apartment in Makhachkala, Dagestan on information that a gang was preparing to strike sporting events. Five Islamist fighters were killed resisting arrest and a sixth turned himself in.

A second Russian force surrounded a building in the Dagestan town of Derbent, known as a jihadist stronghold, in which an armed Islamist terrorist suspect was holed up in a ninth floor apartment. He was killed after a woman and three children were allowed to leave.

Thursday, Feb. 6, the day before the Games’ opening, Russian troops waged a six-hour firefight with a terrorist hiding in a building before he was killed. Seven months ago, a member of the same group ambushed the Derbent Habad Rabbi Ovadia Iskov in Debrent, gravely wounding him.

In another Muslim Republic within reach of Sochi, Kabardino-Balkaria, a terrorist “accomplice” was killed Thursday at a security roadblock set up in the town of Nalchik. Instead of stopping for a document check, the driver opened fire and was shot dead. His Volkswagen was found packed with weapons.

Our sources report that relentless Russian preventive operations have managed to keep armed terrorists at bay from the Olympic town and the wide surrounding areas of the winter sports events. They need to keep the offensive up at top pitch for another two weeks until the Winter Olympics closing ceremony on Feb. 23.That ceremony may be a special target for terrorists.

Our sources report that the people responsible for security at the Sochi Games are most concerned about female suicide killers from one of the jihadists strongholds in the Caucasus or from a western European country slipping in on European passports with tickets of entry, to bide their time until the closing ceremony. The day the games opened Friday, Nadina Dzhamalutdinova was arrested at Kirgizstan UItash airport, suspected of heading out to serve as accomplice and guide for female suicide killers awaiting their moment to enter Sochi. She was held on a two-month detention warrant issued by the local court.

The Russians are believed to have been pointed in her direction by one of the French, German or Austrian intelligence agencies which last week began rounding up and interrogating women of Caucasian origin on watch lists. Some were sighted already on their way to Sochi.

French police last week detained an unknown number of Chechen women at La Roche-sur-Yon and Strasbourg. In Austria and Germany, our sources report at least 10 terror suspects taken into custody, most of them females. The authorities there are keeping this operation closely secret.